Even by the standards of higher education, presidential search committees are odd concoctions, combining the dynamics of the governing board, the faculty, the administration and staff, and the students in an environment that is, at best, unusual and, at worst, adversarial. Ultimately, however, that committee's work is vital to the future of the…

As the cost of college continues to rise, more and more graduates are entering public-service careers like nursing, teaching, and social work with unmanageable levels of student debt. Many will struggle to repay their student loans while meeting their own basic needs. While some debts can be manageable for lawyers at private firms, it can be a…

Researchers who track the American labor market told Congress last week that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the United States has more than enough scientists and engineers and that federal agencies and universities should reform the way they train young scientists to better match the supply of scientists with the demand for researchers. At a…

Academic Analytics is a for-profit company, owned in part by the State University of New York at Stony Brook, that compiles annual Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index. Its Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index is a ranking of graduate programs at research universities based on what purports to be the first objective measurement of per capita…

The number of minority coaches leading the nation's largest collegiate football programs remains low, with 13 of the 241 head-coaching positions in Divisions I-A and I-AA held by members of minority racial or ethnic groups, a report on hiring practices released last week by the organization Black Coaches & Administrators (BCA) says. Only two…

Security restrictions imposed since 2001 have unnecessarily constrained university researchers, and those controls should be loosened in order to enhance the nation's economic and strategic competitiveness, says a report issued by the National Research Council of the National Academies. The report's authors, a committee of high-ranking officials…

Latin America's largest university is now seeking students in the United States. Spotting a ripe market and a growing Hispanic population, the National Autonomous University of Mexico is steadily strengthening its foothold in the United States and Canada--one of the first inroads northward by a Latin American university. For decades the…

The $5.7-billion endowment at Washington University in St. Louis is a nest egg that makes a lot of things possible. Endowment proceeds begat the whimsical, stainless-steel spherical sculpture now hanging in the lobby of the sleek new art museum, which gives off a fun-house mirror effect from below; the sprawling collection of books on the Third…

All college presidents technically hold employment contracts. But whether the terms of those contracts are spelled out clearly is a different story. This article reports that in a survey of 165 public universities where such documents are considered public information, one-third of public university chiefs do not have formal written agreements.…

The United States has begun a $75-million program to promote democracy by supporting Iranian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). That program, coupled with loose talk about regime change from members of Congress, commentators close to the administration, and individuals within the administration, has fed a sense of vulnerability and paranoia…

Last summer the "New York Times" declared young librarians hip--and, in the minds of some librarians, actually reinforced the other stereotype: that older members of their profession are reclusive bookworms and cranky old ladies. But whether young librarians are hip or dowdy doesn't matter. What matters is what they think about the future of the…

In this article, the author passes along a few pieces of advice from "Tips and Thoughts on Improving the Teaching Process in College: A Personal Diary," a self-published book by Joe Ben Hoyle, an associate professor of accounting at the University of Richmond. He excerpts five tips from the 34 in the book, each of which comes wrapped in a pleasing…

Laura Bates, an associate professor of English at Indiana State University, teaches college courses at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility, but her Shakespeare workshop is a rarer undertaking, with a startling history. About six years ago, an inmate in one of her college-degree courses was sent from the general population to the "SHU"--the…

Learning is valuable, but in Africa it is more than that: It is prohibitively expensive. In Ethiopia, where the per-capita income is about $100 a year, a single textbook at Addis Ababa University can cost $50. In order to get more textbooks to students in developing nations, two people are leading an ambitious project to produce and freely…

The numbers of U.S. students traveling abroad to study continued to grow in 2005, increasing 8.5 percent over the previous year, with much of the expansion taking place in such nontraditional destinations as China, Ecuador, and Argentina. According to the Institute of International Education, which tracks the figures in its annual "Open Doors"…